


Reparations

by rats



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Gen, I'm really sorry, fucked-up coping strategies, repercussions of trauma, the only things i care about, trying to solve impossible problems, weird religious overtones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:35:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rats/pseuds/rats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not shutting his son in a freezer. He's locking him in a safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reparations

**_We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it._ **

**_\- RIchard Siken  
_ **

****

* * *

****

The thing that nobody understands, that even Isaac can't understand, is what happens after. It's not as if he doesn't know better, or couldn't fight back, if it really came down to it. And this is the thing that makes his skin crawl when nurses and teachers and cops pass their sad eyes over him and tell him "Son, if you need help, you can tell us." There's something else there, resting underneath the vicious laughter and choking fingers, a tether he can't shake and can't articulate. That thing is the impossibility of telling, the fundamental lack of words for what is there. And also, it's that he has never been their son.

 

 

Isaac took the names that his father gave him. They never go to church except Christmas, but he's read the story, and knows how it worked out. Isaac was a gift from god, a reward. Isaac was a sacrifice and he didn't say no. His father tied his hands and whatever magic they were doing worked and nobody died, and the lord was appeased, and there were blessings and multiplications even though Isaac was not the first born. He doesn't know if this is where his name came from, really. His father might have just liked the sound. He hasn't asked because he can imagine the laughter without having to hear it, can say "It's just a  _story_ " with enough scorn in his own head. Still he can't shake the fact that on the day he found out magic powers were real, it was this image that jumped behind his eyes--the boy on the bed of stones, the raised knife.

It comes to him in dreams, when he's not expecting it. Everything comes to him in dreams, like angels do, or whatever. Sometimes Isaac thinks he must be asleep all the time, so many things come to him in his dreams. It is hard to tell, then, what is really happening and what isn't. Especially when the things he gets told and the things he feels are so incompatible; just don't even touch on the same plane. The version of events that he lived through and the one that gets accounted to him afterward are sometimes so different that it startles him, jerks him forward like---

Like everything. Everything startles him because he can't stay awake and attentive because there are so many things interrupting, pushing into his brain like fog with fingers, and no matter how many times it happens it still makes him want to jump out of his skin. He is always surprised he has any skin left to jump out of. His mouth is always dry from breathing too sharply, a constant low-level thirst that he can't even notice, can't put his finger on the source of, until he reaches for the glass on the counter and it shatters in his hand.

And then the flinch, always; then the back of his hand against the hollow of Isaac's cheek like they were crafted to fit together, the gunshot speed of it, the thick ache, but then all of a sudden the problem dogging him isn't questions, isn't figuring out  _what have I done, what am I doing,_ but the inverse. What steps in to fill the gap.

Because it's not something he did, it's something he _is_ , a pitch tar that rests deep in his body that his father can see and everybody else can only sense at. It's what drives him crazy with rage and leaves him lying on his back in the dark, choking for air from the pressure building in his skull. Isaac knows and can feel it. His dad tells him he was just made badly, something got knocked crooked in him and let wrong in, and he's trying to beat it back. To fix it. His family didn't come from a tradition with words for original sin, or curses, or evil spirits but there are enough unexplainable things in this world that Isaac has learned intimately, seen first-hand, and so maybe this explanation holds as much water as any.

Which is what leaves him hunched over the table, one hand braced to keep himself upright and the other shielding his face, his head. He can hear his father behind him, and then feels his hand on the back of his neck and he jerks like it burns him

(he still can't puzzle this part out either, can't resolve--how to manage this response, this urge to protect himself, when reacting only doubles the inevitable outcome. A gamble. He knows better. The house always wins)

and then it catches him between his shoulders, rucks his shirt up--this time a fist, this time an electrical cord, each time a teeth-gritted voice that asks him "Why do you act like this? Why don't you trust me?"

His skin splits wide open with pain and the lack of an answer, or something that holds the words  _lack_ and  _answer_ within it but is not fully either, and the welt that blooms on his shoulder doesn't resolve it, and his blue-black ribs against the tabletop don't resolve it, and when the back of his head hits the floor it is unresolved, it remains, he is still there, and his thirst is singing _it's killing me,_ _it's KILLING me_ but he doesn't say stop, doesn't plead out loud, knows he owns this and can't give it away

and anyway there's something else underneath still, even now, a trust in the hand that holds the knife and doesn't drop it, and he can hear voices saying " _you know better_ " and " _why didn't you fight_ " but all he can see is that picture, the altar and the tied-up hands.

And he reminds himself that if he were braver, he would be dead already.

His father is kneeling over him now, one hand knotted in his shirt and the other in his hair, holding his head back, exposing his neck. He sees his throat working, his mouth open and his face inhumanly red, but whatever words are showering out of him are lost in the six inches to Isaac's ears

(and it's precisely this kind of failure that threatens to make it all make sense)

So when a hand comes out of heaven to knock his head against the frame of the door, when the voice suddenly trumpets clear and asks "What did I say?" the charge of _not listening_ gets tallied next to Isaac's name and he has to plead guilty. He is guilty of this. He knows there is blood in his mouth and on his shirt but he can't pinpoint which one of them put it there.

And descending the stairs goes worse than usual, each time gets worse, because the usual is always telling him "This is the last time we have to talk about this" and it's never the last time. Isaac keeps waking up. His father says "Get in" and "What are you going to do? You know you can't run from me." And sometimes he says it aloud and sometimes it only hangs in the air between them, a solid intangible gap that murmurs " _If you leave, I have nothing. If you leave me, we both will die,_ " and that is the thing that flexes Isaac's shoulders and that is the thing that rolls him inside and Isaac thinks, but doesn't speak,  _do you know how many times I've died already?_

He has been digging his own grave always. And still, when the dark comes down on top of him and the lock latches next to his head, he can't bear to rest in it. This is what tears him apart, tears his throat with screaming and his fingernails out of his hands--that when he's fighting against the death come to swallow him, he doesn't know which is him and which is the darkness. Walking around outside with his shoes on, he thinks inside his head "Yes, I want to die right now," all the time but when he's down there in it it's not that easy anymore. Something determined comes out of him, and it's so strong and fierce that he would put it in a steel box too if he could. It rages and rages until he's scraped his elbows and all the knobs of his visible spine raw inside that box, and the last thing he can think before the final spark of light in him goes out is  _who wouldn't hide from this?_ And then he is dead, well and truly, and he means it this time.

 

 

The thing that happens after is the lock turning. When Isaac prays, he prays to the god of the lock turning, the only powerful thing (this lock doesn't even latch. It doesn't have to. This is another of the things that slip out of his grasp when he tries to think about them). The lock turns, and the light that comes in is so faint that it doesn't even hurt. A hand grips his hand, his hot wrist. Somehow, despite the length of his body, he is lifted out by arms even longer. Then he's on the floor, his head tipped back against the freezer, and the muscles in his legs can begin to bleed out tension and extend. And there, in the square of delicate light struggling over the ledge of the window, is the thing that Isaac  _knows_ but can't find any words for.

 

It is cupping the back of his head, lifting a sweating glass of water to his scorched mouth, and saying "Drink."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Epigraph is from Richard Siken's _Crush_. The story Isaac is thinking of is from Genesis 22. Everybody makes mistakes.


End file.
